E-Book Overview
Are postcolonies haunted more by criminal violence than other nation-states? The usual answer is yes. In Law and Disorder in the Postcolony, Jean and John Comaroff and a group of respected theorists show that the question is misplaced: that the predicament of postcolonies arises from their place in a world order dominated by new modes of governance, new sorts of empires, new species of wealth—an order that criminalizes poverty and race, entraps the “south” in relations of corruption, and displaces politics into the realms of the market, criminal economies, and the courts. As these essays make plain, however, there is another side to postcoloniality: while postcolonies live in states of endemic disorder, many of them fetishize the law, its ways and itsmeans. How is the coincidence of disorder with a fixation on legalities to be explained? Law and Disorder in the Postcolony addresses this question, entering into critical dialogue with such theorists as Benjamin, Agamben, and Bayart. In the process, it also demonstrates how postcolonies have become crucial sites for the production of contemporary theory, not least because they are harbingers of a global future under construction. (20060705)
E-Book Content
Law and Disorder in the Postcolony
Edited by Jean
Comaroff and John L. Comaroff
Law and Disorder in the Postcolony
The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London
Jean Comaroff is the Bernard E. and Ellen C. Sunny Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago and Honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town. John L. Comaroff is the Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, a Senior Research Fellow at the American Bar Foundation, and Honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2006 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2006 Printed in the United States of America 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06
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ISBN-13 (cloth): 978-0-226-11408-8 ISBN-10 (cloth): 0-226-11408-2 ISBN-13 (paper): 978-0-226-11409-5 ISBN-10 (paper): 0-226-11409-0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Law and disorder in the postcolony / edited by Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-226-11408-2 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-226-11409-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Developing countries—Social conditions. 2. Crime—Developing countries. 3. Violence—Developing countries. 4. Democratization—Developing countries. 5. Postcolonialism. I. Comaroff, Jean. II. Comaroff, John L., 1945– HN980.L36 2006 364.97124—dc22 2006006541 o The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Contents
Preface
vii
1. Law and Disorder in the Postcolony: An Introduction John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff 2. The Mute and the Unspeakable: Political Subjectivity, Violent Crime, and “the Sexual Thing” in a South African Mining Community Rosalind C. Morris 3. “I Came to Sabotage Your Reasoning!”: Violence and Resignifications of Justice in Brazil Teresa P. R. Caldeira
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4. Death Squads and Democracy in Northeast Brazil Nancy Scheper-Hughes
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5. Some Notes on Disorder in the Indonesian Postcolony Patricia Spyer
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6. Witchcraft and the Limits of the Law: Cameroon and South Africa Peter Geschiere 7. The Ethics of Illegality in the Chad Basin Janet Roitman 8. Criminal Obsessions, after Foucault: Postcoloniality, Policing, and the Metaphysics of Disorder Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff 9. On Politics as a